


Half As Much As You

by Meduseld



Category: DCU, DCU (Comics), Green Arrow - All Media Types, Green Lantern - All Media Types
Genre: Bisexuality, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Friends to Lovers, Idiots in Love, Lots and lots of fake headlines, M/M, Past Dinah/Ollie, Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-04
Updated: 2019-10-04
Packaged: 2020-11-23 06:10:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20887406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meduseld/pseuds/Meduseld
Summary: Oliver finds his way to Hal the way he does most things: through a series of disasters.





	Half As Much As You

**Author's Note:**

> For the DC Bingo prompt "Fake Dating". For a hot minute, but it still counts.

Dinah does stop laughing.

Eventually.

The giggles had started about 15 seconds into the call and turned into guffaws, then cackles. He’d actually been kind of surprised that she’d held out that long.

"Dinah" he says, listening to her wheeze, even that sound halfway beautiful, crackling on the other end of the line. "It's not funny", even though it is. If the joke was on somebody else, he’d be chuckling too. Or worse.

She doesn't buy it of course, all he does is kick-start a new round of laughter. Like silver bells.

It hits him, all over again, how much he loves her. By now it's something in his blood.

"I'm sorry" she says, when she gets her breath back. "You know I'd cover for you if I could". And she would too, because she's an awesome person and Oliver never deserved her.

He’s trying to, even though he’s aware got roughly a snowball’s chance in Hell at getting her back, no matter how much they love each other. She’s the sort of person that makes you want to be better. He’s never met anyone easier to love.

But maybe it’s best that she can’t help him fix this, even if, with her, it wouldn’t be too hard to swing. It would have been an incredibly tempting story, actually, ‘BILLIONAIRE WOOS BACK BLONDE ROSE’, big enough that everyone could ignore the gaping holes in it for the drama of it all.

But Dinah was very visibly papped that night ‘SHE’S THE DANCING QUEEN: HEIRESS PARTIES SOLO’, which only stung a little. Or a little of a lot.

It does seem to the world, and to them, like this is the break-up that takes, but the innuendo in every article still cuts like a knife. So does hanging up, biting back the three small words he used to use to end those calls.

“You’re going to need cover” Bruce growls, when Oliver tells him, the way he says everything, like he can’t trust Oliver to have thought of that. “Gee, Brain, it’s almost like that’s why I’m here” Oliver says.

That and he needs the number for the hottest celebrity chef du jour, which it stings him to admit he hasn’t been able to get. Oh, there’s also the fact he thinks the enterprising coke dealers of Star City might be reaching out to Gotham for a network.

If only the news were focusing on that instead of Oliver-the-mayor-Queen’s suspicious late night office rendezvous with what could be the Green Arrow, if you squint, through a very dark window shot: ‘QUEEN AND ARROW MEETING? BUSINESS OR PLEASURE MR. MAYOR?’.

“_Tabloids_” Bruce says, the same way he says Ra’s Al Ghul. It’s a sentiment they share. One of the many things they refuse to admit they have in common.

Oliver could claim it’s a trick of the light, but the Oliver-the-hero-Queen’s activity was traced too close to the area that night for it to be dismissed out of hand.

It’s not just the abundance of memes and fluff articles. His sources in the PD say they’re planning a surveillance op, just to be sure. And Oliver doesn’t want or need that kind of scrutiny.

Working out of his office, with its leather couches, mini bar and hidden arrow cache, is so much more comfortable than the club. And it cuts way down on his commute.

Bruce gives him the eyeball when he says it, and Oliver remembers that discretion is the better part of valor. They’re not _that _similar after all.

“Any reason you couldn’t have been banging me?” Hal says, crossing one tan leg over the other as he leans against the kitchen island, eating all of Oliver’s breakfast cereal. The one with all the marshmallows that he always pretends he’s buying for Roy.

“What?” Oliver says, pulling his forehead up from where he’s been banging it lightly against the black marble of the counter. It’s soothing.

When he manages to look over, Hal’s eyes are steady and brown. “Be good cover” he says, licking at a stream of milk sliding down his very tan wrist, like he’s in a risqué Got Milk? ad.

There’s a lot of truth to that. And a hell of a whole lot of implications.

Oliver’s gut ices over, years of practice keeping him steady.

He’s the definition of still waters run deep, Hal, and sometimes Oliver can’t read him at all. Those eyes might be warm brown, but they never give anything away, with or without a mask.

He could be serious. He could be making a very, very macho joke. Or the opposite. He could be implying something else entirely, but that could just be Oliver’s eternal optimism.

It hasn’t been beaten out of him, even though he knows how guys can get about this, has known for years, navigated the complex labyrinth of hierarchies that dictate exactly how gay something is by who did what to who and when.

Or maybe Hal's pulling a Thomas Elliot Special, luring him in with just a hint, waiting for him to take the bait and then laughing when he does, caught out in a way he can’t deny.

There’s really only one answer Oliver can give.

“Don’t be a dick” he says, voice even, sounding the way he means to. For once.

Hal shrugs, languid as ever. No big, unless it is. He’s still unreadable, looking infuriatingly handsome under the bland look on his face.

For a moment, Oliver can’t breathe.

But all Hal does is slide the bowl over by Oliver’s head with a “Suit yourself. I’m going to shower”.

There’s that too, isn’t there. The fact that Hal usually stays with Oliver when he’s planetside, his schedules too erratic to keep and apartment and his ring making his commutes easy.

Maybe he’s just checking that Oliver isn’t going to try and molest him in the middle of the night or something.

Oliver wants to have more faith in him than that, really he does, but. He’s been here before. More than once.

He can’t help the quick glance he shoots at Hal’s retreating back, meeting Hal’s eyes, face angled Covergirl easy over his shoulder.

There’s no mocking, no glee at having caught Oliver out and no smolder either.

It feels more like a quick radio check in the field, making sure they’re on the same wavelength. Then he’s gone, around the corner.

Oliver looks back at the bowl and spends a long time staring it, fighting against the urge to put the spoon in his mouth, tracking his teeth and tongue where Hal had been. 

*

Dinah would be proud of him, Oliver thinks. 

Or tries to think. It’s a little hard to hold on to a thought with Hal smirking and leaning against the moonlit glass of his office like he’s escaped from _Rebel Without a Cause_.

His jacket is green leather instead of red nylon, easy to find in the city that Green Arrow calls home, easy enough to mistake for his uniform through the dark glass.

There’s a telephoto lens pointed at it from somewhere, and Oliver can see the headline now: MIDNITE RENDEZVOUS FOR MR. MAYOR. Never mind that it’s actually closer to 10 pm.

Still, he only freaked out at Dinah a little on the phone before knocking on the bathroom door, Hal grinning behind it.

Mostly she’d been concerned about him. Once or twice, when they’d been dating, and Dinah had been chipping at his walls like a demented contractor, she’d implied this.

Asked, in that roundabout Jedi mind trick way she has, after what Oliver felt for Hal.

He’d avoided her every time, denial an inborn family trait. There’s a lot of reasons they didn’t work out.

But he’s made progress.

He can actually think the word bisexual in his own head, for one.

Except when Hal's smile twitches just a little, like maybe he just heard Oliver’s thoughts. He pulls his eyes back to his paperwork with a frown, feeling childish.

Hal’s ring is listening in on a few hundred feeds and frequencies, among them the SCPD one for the team huddled in a van downstairs, ready to burst into Oliver’s office. They didn’t have time or the warrant to bug or cam his office, despite their best efforts, but Oliver’s made sure they’ve been tipped about tonight. The paparazzi didn’t need to be told.

It’s worrying, Hal’s smile. Oliver knows that logically, Hal knows plenty he’s not sharing with the class, no matter how hard Batman growls.

Knowing it in his gut is different, a roiling sort of ache, made worse by the faint alien green glow sparking in his eyes, the only indication Hal’s using his ring.

There’s a tiny furrow between his eyes and billow to his lips, like he’s almost mouthing the words he’s hearing. And it’s the only really expression Hal’s made in hours, ever since their possibly disastrous ground rules laying chat earlier.

Or more like Oliver’s rambling monologue.

He had tried to be clear and polite and courteous, trying to salvage the weirdness of asking a friend to fake an affair. Instead Hal had nodded with a hand on his chin, the only indication in his stunningly statuesque stillness that he was trying very hard not to laugh.

And then they were here, the moon high and quiet behind the glass, filtering in through the leather on his back.

“Showtime” Hal whispers, head titled like a beagle hearing a far off step. And suddenly, Oliver is terrified.

At least he’s playing the blushing virgin as Hal advances on him, panther stroll as elegant as it is ball shrivelingly scary. Or at least having some sort of ball related effect.

“Hey” Hal says, voice like fingers on Oliver’s skin, dropping into his lap. It’s like a neural storm, pheromones and solid weight and body heat, enough to put a fire in Oliver's blood.

He makes an embarrassing noise as Hal’s nose and mouth trace down his face.

It’s entirely possible he won’t survive this, heart throbbing in his chest, alive with the electric shock jolt his body gives, entirely overcome when Hal’s warm strong hand slips between his legs.

That’s no-no territory, supposedly, he thinks with the little blood left in his brain. “Don’t hate me for this” Hal rumbles in his ear, all love and sex made audible, before dropping between his legs and sucking Oliver into his mouth.

The time the lightning strike cracks his brain in two.

The first half can only moan warm, wet, _good._ The other half realizes, with startling clarity, as the door bursts open and the faces of two SCPD detectives go from steely determination to slack-jawed horror, that Hal’s clearly done this before and that this was actually the only way this was ever going to work.

It’s clear from the smirk on Hal’s face as he pulls away, badly play acting surprise.

Because as charming, as convincing, as Hal can be he can’t pretend to be shocked or terrified. It’s not in his nature.

And nobody would have bought it if they’d been chastely making out with their hands above the waist like Oliver had planned. It seems kind of laughable now.

But the shock of seeing the actual sitting mayor’s cock in the mouth of a man so gorgeous he turned heads from every gender, sexuality and species, that’s the sort of thing that got burned into your memories.

From the way the cops blush and stutter, he knows no one is going to look too hard at this. They'll close the book on it as soon as the get back to the precinct, their minds already on the gay porn they are going to and up finding planted in their lockers as a joke after this.

They don't realize that Hal’s easy charm is already hustling them out the door, their minds on this little charade set with a little help. Hal really was the perfect choice for this.

Oliver wants to kiss him, maybe, or punch him in his perfect teeth. He feels muddled, flushed and stuttering, half of his mind wandering and wondering if Hal uses the ring for a glowing Invisalign.

It plays, probably the way Hal wanted it too, from the sympathetic looks the cops shoot him, smile-wincing as they shut the door behind them, replete with apologies.

Oliver is going to have to put in an apocalyptically angry call to the commissioner really soon. In a minute.

When he deals with the fact that he’s still half hard in his fucking slacks and Hal _looking_ at him like that. Like Oliver is a cornered animal getting ready to bite. And he feels like it too.

Oliver can’t look at him. Instead he leans against the closed door, like he’s keeping the world out, face in his hands like a kid for the same.

“You can punch me now, if you want” Hal says, perfectly neutral.

Oliver glances at him for a moment, over the tips of his fingers like he’s the fucking sun. Then he grinds the heels of his hands against his eyes.

“No” he grits out “Just...you can be such an asshole, sometimes”.

“I know” Hal says. He sounds like he means it. 

*

The silence is only awkward between them as Oliver opens the door to his penthouse. 

It had been oddly easy to fake closeness, comfort, for the benefit of the CCTV cameras on the way out of his office and the ride back had been anything but silent.

Oliver had poured all his frustration and longing and rage and even a tinge of heartbreak into the speakerphone at the commissioner, as Hal sat quiet, mannequin still, eyes lit with that _Blade Runner_ style glow as he used his ring to travel millions of lightyears away.

It’s only now, with no distraction and no reason to pretend, that Oliver can’t’ breathe right, can't fathom sleep.

Leaning awkwardly in the narrow hallway, minimalist chic according to the designer, good choke point according to him, Oliver opens his mouth to say something, anything.

And Hal puts his tongue in his mouth, pinning him against the decorative table, yellow daffodils shaking in a white porcelain vase.

Then the only word he can manage is “please”.

“Sure” Hal whispers in his ear and Oliver just. Lets go. He doesn’t think about tomorrow or their friendship or Dinah or anything beyond the fact that he’s here and hard and they want each other.

They leave a trail of clothes on their way to Oliver’s room, headless and wanton. It doesn’t matter.

They’re home alone and will be for days. If Hal stays.

It’s a hard thought to hold on to when Hal pushes him down on the bed and takes him into his mouth in earnest.

He doesn't say anything, no _I’ve wanted to do that forever_ or _you taste like heaven_. Nothing but that single minded focus Hal shows in the field, not channeling his willpower into his ring but his tongue, his lips, his even breaths.

Oliver doesn’t last, too keyed up from earlier, from all of it, moaning because he wants Hal to know just how good this is. And it is insanely good.

It’s not just that Hal knows what he’s doing, it’s the fact that it feels right. Being here, like this. The hot, wet drag of Hal’s mouth is perfect, a benediction.

It’s all too easy to curse and arch and finish.

Hal stays on him, swallowing down his come like he’s been dreaming of it. He only makes a little noise of happy surprise, almost inaudible if Oliver hadn’t been hoping for it, when Oliver hauls him up, pressing their bodies together so he can snake a hand between Hal’s legs.

Their lips smear against each other, too uncoordinated to be a kiss, and then Hal’s mouth drops open on Oliver’s collarbone, breathing in a way that makes his spent cock twitch.

“Calluses baby” he whispers, at his punched out gasp at Oliver’s touch, enjoying the way Hal writhes, the happy agony of pressing his archery strong fingers around his cock and _pumping_.

A hand job might be a high school move, but there’s nothing uncertain about how much Hal enjoys it, hiding his face in the crook of Oliver's neck, sounds going straight into his ear. His hair is thicker than it looks, tickling Oliver’s nose.

He’s never felt more powerful, more desirable, than he does right now, the most dangerous lantern in the galaxy shivering in his arms as he comes and comes.

So naturally the first thing Oliver says, when he gets his breath back, cooling now that Hal is stretched out at his side is “Ew”.

In his defense, he’s picking at the dried mess smeared between his thighs and as far up as his bellybutton.

"You big baby" Hal says, fond, rolling over to smack his hand right Oliver's middle. The ring flashes, once, and Oliver's suddenly clean, reeling at the alien feeling of somehow cool _press_ of light against his skin.

"Sweet" he says and means it, mostly avoiding the urge to wonder how many different bodies Hal’s used that little trick on. “My little buddy” Hal says, with a wriggle of his ring finger, settling his head onto the pillow next to Oliver’s with a shiny, fake smile.

It fades quickly though, and Oliver can’t tell why, can’t read him anymore. He’s very tired.

And Hal’s eyes look so dark, practically charcoal, not his usual perfect Crayola brown. His face is very set.

Oliver should say something, and he wants to. But his eyelids are so heavy and the bed is so warm. He falls asleep, mouth half open, the lights still blazing above him.

*

When he wakes up, he thinks that maybe he just closed his eyes for a second, judging from the glare prying at the edges of his eyelids. 

But the light is coming through the windows, the sun nearly as high as it’s going to get.

The other half of the bed is empty, of course. Slept in, he notices, feeling more rested than he has in ages.

Probably since the last time things were good with him and Dinah. He’s always slept better with someone beside him.

Oliver stretches, wondering if showering before seeing whether or not he's alone in the apartment is a cowardly thing to do. Instead, for reasons of plucking up his courage and sick curiosity, he leans into the dented pillow.

It smells like Hal, like a whole night's worth. Which is encouraging. And a stalker like move, if he's honest with himself.

When he makes it out, not showered but dressed, the there’s fresh coffee in the machine and Hal, too.

He’s outside, soaking up the sunshine, leaning his elbows on the terrace railing. There’s a cup in his hands, still steaming.

It registers as an afterthought, pinging distantly in his mind because Hal’s _breathtaking._

He’s wearing nothing but a faded pair of sweatpants that might be Oliver’s, all of him glowing in the light. Oliver’s met actual Greek gods and, right now, Hal could give them a run for their money.

He’s never felt so tongue-tied, Hal’s back flexing under his skin more than he can handle this recently woken up and uncaffeinated.

He takes his time in the kitchen, suddenly too dark and cold, fixing up his own mug before stepping out into the sun.

“Google Earth taking pics?” he says, sounding awkward to his own ears and accidentally triggering his own justified paranoia that there probably are a few paparazzi lenses pointed at them.

“I could check the satellite, if you want” Hal says, half amused, with a small furrow in the browning skin between his eyebrows. Of course he didn’t get the reference. Outer space doesn’t get cable.

“You want me to go?” Hal says, eyes still scanning the skyline, into the deepening silence.

Oliver glances into the black of his coffee, like maybe the answer is hiding in there. He settles on “Not really, no”.

“Rad” Hal says, and there’s the tiniest untensing in the rounded edges of his shoulders, unnoticeable unless you were staring at the splash of freckles on them the way Oliver was. 

In the sun and vague sounds of traffic drifting up from the street, Oliver feels almost comfortable, right when Hal says “You want to do that again?”, deliberately casual. Or maybe truly casual.

He garbles about half a dozen words, mashed up into each other, until he shuts himself up with a gulp of too hot coffee. And to think people have called him charming.

“If you want to” he manages, finally, looking at Hal through his lashes, a yellow haze. He doesn’t want to chance whatever look or non-look might be on his face.

But his grin blazes through anyway.

“Rad” he says and Oliver finds himself smiling back.

He’s not even mad the next morning, Hal snoring in a tangle of limbs next to him, when Dinah texts him the SC Observer’s front page.

Actually, it makes him smile, the grainy picture and gaudy text overlay blaring HOT DRINK OF COFFEE FOR QUEEN.

When he wakes up, Hal just laughs and drags Oliver back down onto the sheets. 

**Author's Note:**

> The title of this fic comes from an Of Montreal song [Tim I Wish You Were Born A Girl](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQSd9q1OSPg) because the sentiment of that song is exactly where they're at. Thomas Elliot is the jackass rich guy doctor [also known as Hush](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hush_\(character\)).  
Up to this point in my life I could have sworn the _Rebel Without a Cause_ jacket was leather [but nope, it's nylon](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/james-deans-rebel-a-cause-jacket-up-auction-1088823). Here's Ridley Scott [talking about the really awesome](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDkFncZG3yE) _Blade Runner_ eye effect and why it fits my idea of Hal's ring use perfectly. [Google Earth is always taking pics](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B38nxJScf9g). Hal keeps refusing to let me into his head in HalOllie fics, [but please enjoy this visual for him on the terrace](https://typhongeneocratis.tumblr.com/post/157522853264) (it’s Colin Farrell in Total Recall, for the, ahem, curious).


End file.
